EL, Muenchen, 8-30-'09
After Parzival stood before Titurel and had the experiences of which
we spoke, an intimate and deep feeling of shame arose in him. This
feeling of shame permeated him completely. He had gone through
catharsis and had thought that he was now so good and pure that he
could become one of the followers of the Master of all masters, the
Christ. In this feeling of shame he was reminded of Christ's words:
“Why do you call me good? No one is good but God.” He now
knew how very imperfect he was still and how much he still had to take
into his striving for the good, how much he was still lacking in order
to be good.
And a second feeling, a feeling of fear overcame him. He thought that
he had gotten rid of that a long time ago. But it was a different kind
of fear from the ones he'd known previously. It was a feeling of his
own smallness and weakness as a man compared with the sublime Godly
being when he let a second word of Christ live in his soul:
“Become perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect.”
These two words should live in the soul of every esoteric.
An esoteric should kindle full devotion for divine beings in his soul.
Thereby the consciousness develops that what one does isn't so good,
but that one should always try to become more perfect. We should look
at what's developing in one's soul. God lives in developing things. If
we get to the point where we're acting in a good and noble way, then
it's God in us who's good. The God who lets us act in a good and noble
way is our archetype itself, that created us. We must become a
complete copy of this archetype.
Be it ever so hidden, there's a selfish motive in everything we do. We
must realize that we can't be selfless. It's a world karma that lets
us act egoistically. But world karma is God. Everything that God is
and does in the way of good is better than we could do it. An esoteric
should tell himself: Let me do something that I have made it my duty
to do, let me do it as hard as I can and in such a way that I tell
myself that the divine element that's at work in me is doing this and
I'm only the instrument of this godly element — then the higher
self in its striving towards perfection is revealed to him.
There are three revelations of the higher self: Through a dream, an
inkling, and through meditation. If an esoteric has lived in his
meditations, if he has tried to repeatedly live in his thoughts, words
and deeds in accordance with the perfection principle, if he has
repeatedly tried to be good — then at some point he'll realize:
If I would place all the joy and suffering that I previously thought
was in me outside me, then it would be as if it surrounded me like a
soul-spiritual thing; I no longer live in what I have placed outside,
I'm no longer touched by the waves of pain and joy. Then a pupil must
learn to stand fast in the center of his existence by living entirely
in the power of the mantra: Ex Deo nascimur. Thereby the pupil
inserts the higher self into his humanness; this second I isn't in us
and can't be found by brooding into oneself but only by growing out
beyond oneself.
Through the exercises we stimulate a force in us that otherwise works
more as a memory force in us and reawakens the ideas, feelings and
sensations that were aroused by past things and happenings in the
outer world. The pupil gets to know this as a force only; he learns
how to organize it up into the brain, so that it eventually grows
toward the higher self that floats above us. The pupil now lives in
this newly acquired force. All outer pains and joys now seem to be
outside of his center. He stands there firmly enclosed in himself
against all outer influences; he feels free in himself and free of all
external things.
And the pupil feels something else. Previously he had learned the
teachings about karma. Now he knows that he stands under the necessity
of the effects of karma. He experiences the higher self that places him
into existence through birth in this newly attained force, and he sees
how what develops in his destiny in the outer world must be brought
about through the active necessity of karmic force. This gives him a
certain joy with respect to pain and suffering. He confronts
everything with equanimity.
If a pupil has progressed this far, he then gets to contemplation and
thereby to consomatio of the higher self. And now spiritual
eyes and ears are organized into him and begin to function when he
devotes himself to the exercises with patience, persistence and
concentration. He learns to see the light world of spiritual beings
and the spiritual will being who resounds towards him, audible to his
opened spiritual ears. And he knows that he can't have these spiritual
experiences by means of his physical organism. In his experience of
the pentagram (8–27) he feels that he's placed into the whole etheric
and spiritual world This drawing and occult script has a
soul-awakening and a spirit-liberating effect. The pupil should
repeatedly place it before his soul and he'll experience that every
new forces grow in his soul thereby. We saw that Parzival who stood
before Titurel in solitude had the experiences that come to expression
in this occult script. The whole Christian wisdom and mystery that
winds around the Grail is expressed in it.
The mystery wisdom is like
a greenhouse plant that was only revealed to a few mature people; what
the rest of mankind received was the faith content of the various
religions. The Christian wisdom of the Grail is a mystery that was
revealed to all as knowledge but to no one as a content to be taken on
faith. All pupils of western esotericism are Parzivals.
Lohengrin is a son of Parzival. He's a personality that doesn't come
fully to expression in a body. The swan is the expression of the
higher individuality that radiates above him. Lohengrin unites himself
with Elsa, the human soul. She doesn't ask him where he comes from,
she doesn't ponder about his nature — she takes him the way he
is with thanks and humility for his gifts. But when someone
maliciously suggests that he's not of noble birth, she asks him about
this. Thereupon, Lohengrin has to withdraw from her. He disappears up
into the spiritual world. A pupil should mainly have a feeling of
thankfulness for what is given to him from higher worlds in this
incarnation. He should not investigate and search or interpret these
talents with his ordinary intellect. For this induces the higher self
to withdraw from his soul. There's a big warning for us in Elsa's
fate. We shouldn't let any outer thoughts, no feelings and sensations
from the outer world into the sanctuary of our mediation and
concentration, otherwise that source of strength through which we
attain the growing out and up of our human forces to the higher self
isn't stimulated, we can't find the higher self, it repeatedly
retreats before us. We should observe the projection of the spiritual
world's effects into us in contemplation, closed off from all outer
impressions, alone in the deepest quiet and immersion; resting in the
deepest solitude we should let them work in us quietly and chastely in
order to eventually become knowers of truth, to become an instrument
for the work of spiritual beings.
|